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Saturday, December 31, 2011

I'm currently out of town visiting family. I took the opportunity to
check out the fabric stores here in Ottawa. A number of them were closed
for the holidays which was disappointing. I visited Sew For It in Bells
Corners. It had a huge stock, but didn't carry any of the more modern
fabric lines. No Moda, Robert Kaufman, Riley Blake, Michael Miller. They
also didn't cut fat quarters from the bolt which I found very strange
for a quilt shop. What they did have was a ton of tone on tone prints,
so I picked up a number of fabrics for my Farmer's Wife Quilt in teals,
greens and blues.

The other shop I visited was
Dragonfly Fabrics in Alta Vista. They had a more limited selection of
fabrics but carried modern designs. My Mom bought me the adorable Eric
Carle Hungry Caterpiller panel and border prints which I can't wait to
quilt up into a wall hanging for Levi.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

I think I've gone a bit overboard with all of the swaps and
quilt-a-longs and bees I've been joining. In an effort to get into a bee
for 2012, I sent out a ton of feelers, having been too late to get into
the one that I really wanted to join. Unfortunately, I might have over
committed myself. In fact, I'm having some trouble remembering what it
is I've joined. This post is going to be my attempt to get organized.

QAL #1

First up, the Sew. Happy. Quilt. QAL that Jenna is running over on Sew Happy Geek. This QAL began December 21 and runs until March 18.

Fabric requirements are 11 to 12 fat quarters for the blocks and about 2
yards for the sashing and border. I'm going to use the Riley Blake
Designs Solids FQ bundle below for this QAL. I'll use the reds, oranges,
pinks and greens for the blocks, plus white.

QAL #2

Next up is the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt-a-long
that every blogger on the internet is participating in. Karyn from Make
Something is starting up a QAL in January. Since The Workroom is where I
purchase my fabrics here in Toronto, AND she's encouraging people to
share their progress during Quilt Sundays at The Workroom, I've decided
to join up. I'm using this as an opportunity to learn and practise paper
piecing, since there are foundation templates for all 144 blocks
online.

I
haven't decided on a colour scheme for this quilt. I'm wondering if I
should just go completely scrappy and use whatever is handy.
Alternatively, I could go monochrome. I do love green and perhaps some
cohesion is a good idea when making 144 quilt blocks? What do you
think?

Bee #1

Hayley
of Mrs. Pickles posted on Flickr that she wanted to start a bee for
beginners and I joined up. So far there are only six members but she's
holding out for twelve. Hayley will be giving more details about the bee
after the holidays and I can't wait to see what we're going to be
doing.

Bee #2
I
think I mentioned previously that I'd joined an add-a-border bee on
flickr. I've since decided to withdraw from this group. I perused the
groups photo stream and I don't think we share the same tastes. It just
isn't a good fit for me.
So there it is. Three
groups. I really thought there were more! This is totally manageable.
Sweet! 2012 is going to be all kinds of quilty goodness!